Discontented Soul

Buck Doesn't Stop at This President's Desk
by Helen Thomas
Published on Friday, April 8, 2005 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says President Bush was "pleased" with the latest investigation that blames CIA analysts for the false information that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
That's the reason Bush invaded Iraq, remember? Once again it's those low-level bureaucrats who took us into war. And once again a panel of "don't rock the boat" establishment figures has let the commander in chief off the hook.
I asked McClellan if the president was upset to be so misguided and at such a human cost. Well, you had to be there.
He danced around on the subject, talked about "a culture in the intelligence community that had not adapted to meet the threats that we face today." But he could not be pinned down on how the president personally felt about making war on the basis of bum information.
Any other president would have blown his stack. Instead, Bush honored former CIA Director George Tenet with the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Imperial Reach
by Michael Klare
Published on Friday, April 8, 2005 by The Nation

As the Defense Department begins to look beyond the war in Iraq, a major priority will be to commence a systematic realignment of US forces and bases abroad. This massive undertaking will result in a substantial reduction of American forces in Germany and South Korea, and the establishment of new facilities in Eastern Europe, the Caspian Sea basin, Southeast Asia and Africa. Tens of thousands of troops (and their dependents) now stationed abroad will be redeployed to the United States, while fresh contingents will be sent to areas that have never before housed a permanent US military presence. These steps are largely justified in terms of military effectiveness--to eliminate obsolete cold war facilities and ease the transport of American troops to likely scenes of conflict. Underlying the planning, however, is a new approach to combat and a fresh calculus of the nation's geopolitical interests...

© 2005 The Nation

Bush's attendance at the Pope's funeral merely masks White House exploitation of Catholic division
by Sidney Blumenthal
Published on Thursday, April 7, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)

President Bush, a militant evangelical Protestant, has lowered the American flag to half-staff for the first time at the death of a pope. Also for the first time, a US president will attend a papal funeral. Bush's political rhetoric is deliberately inflected with Catholic theological phrases, in particular "the culture of life", words he used to justify his interference in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman, the removal of whose feeding tube was upheld 19 times by state and federal courts.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

A Pope of Peace and Bush's War
by Derrick Z. Jackson
Published on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 by the Boston Globe

The facade of respect did not hide President Bush's utter disdain for the pleas for peace from Pope John Paul II. In his press conference Monday to announce that he would attend John Paul's funeral, Bush was asked by a reporter: ''How do you think this pope has affected America's spiritual and political life? And how much weight did you give to his opposition to the Iraq war?"
Bush began his answer by calling the pope courageous, moral, and godly. He talked about how the pope had a ''huge influence not only amongst, for example, young people in America, but around the world. One of his great legacies will be the influence he had on the young. He spoke to the poor. He spoke to morality."
Bush never answered the question on the Iraq invasion of 2003. The closest he got was, ''Of course he was a man of peace and he didn't like war. And I fully understood that. And I appreciated the conversations I had with the Holy Father on the subject."...
Many legacies of John Paul are being deeply covered and debated, from whether he helped or hindered the Catholic Church's relationship to modern times to whether he was too detached and lenient in the American clergy sex abuse scandal. One that has received little play is the pope's desperate efforts to stop the world's wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation from invading Iraq. Bush called the pope a man of peace. Bush could not answer the question on Iraq because the pope's presence, even in death, continues to expose him to be a man of war.
Now that the invasion has been revealed to be a lie, with no weapons of mass destruction ever found, it makes it even more appalling how the pope's efforts were rebuffed. Bush said the pope had profound influence on children. On Iraq, Bush treated the pope like a well-meaning but naïve child...
John Paul said war is a defeat for humanity. The United States and Bush represent one of John Paul's biggest defeats in the search for humanity.
© 2005 Boston Globe

A Side Order of Human Rights
by Eric Schlosser
Published on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 by the New York Times

And now a word of good news from the world of fast food.
Last month, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that represents farm workers in southern Florida, announced that it was ending a four-year boycott of Taco Bell. The most remarkable thing about the announcement was the reason behind it: Taco Bell had acceded to all of the coalition's demands. At a time of declining union membership, failed organizing drives and public apathy about poverty, a group of immigrant tomato pickers had persuaded an enormous fast food company - Yum Brands, which in addition to Taco Bell owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W All American Food Restaurants and Long John Silver's - to increase the wages of migrant workers and impose a tough code of conduct on Florida tomato suppliers. "Human rights are universal," said Jonathan Blum, a senior vice president of Yum, adding that under Taco Bell's new labor rules "indentured servitude by suppliers is strictly forbidden."

The fight against extreme poverty can be won, but only if Bush recognizes that military might alone won't secure the world
by Jeffrey Sachs
Published on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

The end of poverty is a choice, not a forecast. There are a billion people on earth fighting daily for their survival. The world has committed, in the Millennium Development Goals, to cut extreme poverty by half by 2015. By 2025, extreme poverty can be banished. By dint of interest and calendar, the next step rests with Downing Street...

US Had Hand in Violating Iraq Oil Sanctions
by Molly Ivins
Published on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 by the Nashua Telegraph / New Hampshire

Some days, it’s hard to pick the outrage du jour, but hypocrisy is always an inviting target, and the United Nations oil-for-food scandal provides a two-fer.
We have been hearing much right-wing huffing over the dreadful, terrible, awful, unprecedented, worst-ever scandal in all history.
One indignant winger was livid because The New York Times devoted more coverage to the collapse of Enron than to the earth-shaking U.N. scandal.
Those throwing conniption fits over the United Nations’ misdeeds (failure of oversight, according to the Volcker Report) might want to meditate a bit on the role of the U.S. government in all this before they further embarrass themselves denouncing perfidious foreigners...

© 2005 Telegraph Publishing Company

COMIC BOOKS AS PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

MIMI HANAOKA

(INTHEFRAY MAGAZINE, MA, APRIL 3)

The U.S. Army is attempting to create a comic book that will, it hopes, have the youth of the Middle East and Islamic world embracing Americanism with open arms. This new pawn in the escalating war of media propaganda between the U.S. and the Muslim and Middle Eastern world will be facing stiff competition. The tentacular reach and popularity of the graphic novel now extends to the Middle East with AK Comics’ Middle East Heroes line of comic books, which is the first comic book specifically targeted for the audience in the region. The graphic novel, which is published in both Arabic and English, pits forces of good and evil for control of the City of All Faiths. Al-Ahram Weekly recently ran an article about Middle East Heroes with the cheerful title “My Favorite Superhero,” which quoted a 27 year-old business analyst explaining the appeal of the comic: “The setting is familiar and most characters’ names are Arabic…it’s just easier to connect.”

THE EXTRAORDINARY circumstances surrounding the death of Florida woman Terry Schiavo has exposed a disturbing condition about society - we are scared of dealing with death and the right to die in a rational way.It is that so many societies on this planet view death as inherently undermining of social order and cohesion. We like to control the circumstances in which individuals and their loved ones decide on the moment to finish with life. The timidity with which politicians approach voluntary euthanasia and the restrictions that are placed on the medias discussion of suicide are testament to this state of affairs.The Commonwealth Government's publication Suicide and Mental Illness observes that most media try to ensure that suicide isn't portrayed as a way to solve problems or glamorised in any way. I recall a radio interviewer cautioning me before I went on air to discuss my own experience with depressive illness about talking about suicide.The only time an Australian government had the courage to end the farcical situation of treating Australians who help to carry out their loved ones wish to die a peaceful death as criminals, it was overridden by a combination of religious and moral conservatives. This was, of course, the Northern Territory's 1995 right to die legislation which the Commonwealth Parliament declared null and void in 1997. It is not suggested that suicide or the right to die should not be handled sensitively by the media and the community - after all with every death there are those left behind who grieve the loss of a human life - but we should not view death in these circumstances as being a wholly negative experience. Philip Nitschke, the veteran right to die campaigner and writer and activist Fiona Stewart are challenging our society to think more rationally about suicide and the right to die in their new book Killing me Softly, which was released just before Easter this year. The Schiavo case makes this book compelling reading for those of us who are sickened by the inhumanity of those who will go to any length to preserve an existence which is so ghastly. As Nitschke and Stewart correctly note, the current blanket negativity towards suicide in all circumstances is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Great Enlightenment thinkers such as Scottish philosopher David Hume regarded suicide as a viable and worthwhile option. When life has become a burden both courage and prudence should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence, wrote Hume. It was the advent of psychiatry and allied disciplines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that redefined suicide, according to Nitschke and Stewart. Concepts such as personal autonomy, liberty, self- determination and free will values cherished by contemporary Western society became increasingly sidelined, they write.Suicide is now always seen as a medical problem which needs to be cured or alleviated in some way. There is in the view of many in positions of authority in our society, no legitimate reason for taking ones own life. This zero tolerance approach to suicide is linked to the refusal by most politicians in Australia to advocate right to die legislation. Yet such a stance flies in the face of statistics which Nitschke and Stewart cite in their book. Despite the constant media hype about there being a youth suicide epidemic, the reality is that it is older Australians who take their lives, often because they have a terminal illness or their quality of life is so vastly diminished that they are literally living a hell on earth.In 2002, the suicide rate for teenage boys was 13.9 per 100,000 and 4.1 for teenage girls. But for people aged 70 to 74 the rate is 16.8 and for those seventy five and over it is 22.5.The point is this - suicide and the longing to die might be the manifestation of a mental illness and therefore a tragedy or it may simply be, as Nitschke and Stewart quote writer Lisa Lieberman, "an active assertion of identity. I die therefore I am". The refusal by our society to respect the right of a seriously ill or aged individual to control their own death amounts, say Nitschke and Stewart, to "an annihilation of self". The unseemly spectacle of the US Congress, lawyers, churches and family members all clamouring to save a woman whose life has effectively ended is not an isolated case. We can expect more people who are in the position of Terry Schiavo to be used as a political and moral weapon because we refuse to recognise death as having just as much value as life. And the person who contemplates suicide because medical science and all manner of alternative remedies can do nothing to ease their intense suffering should not be allowed to have those thoughts without being adjudged to be mentally ill. The right to die is as fundamental as the right to life - an uncomfortable thought for many but one that is perfectly rational and fair.

This President Is Right Indeed
by Anwaar Hussain
Published on Saturday, April 2, 2005 by the PakTribune (Islamabad, Pakistan)

When this President says,“My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats” he is to be believed, Goering tactics be damned. For his unmatchable past record of telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, there is every reason to believe that this President is right indeed...

© 2005 PakTribune

The Rightwing 'Smear Campaign' Against World Body
by Linda McQuaig
Published on Sunday, April 3, 2005 by the Toronto Star

For years, there's been a determined campaign to smear the United Nations and its secretary-general Kofi Annan in connection with the U.N.'s oil-for-food program.
But last week, Annan was cleared of wrongdoing by an independent investigative committee headed by respected former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker...
The real agenda here seems to be undermining the U.N., which, for all its flaws, represents the world's best shot at some semblance of international law. Sadly, America today doesn't appear to support international law.
In case that sounds like just my opinion, let me quote someone who should know — John Bolton, the Bush administration's choice for ambassador to the U.N.
Here's what The New Yorker recently quoted Bolton saying: "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so — because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States."
Constrict the U.S.? It's called the rule of law and it's hard to imagine a civilized world without it.

© 2005 The Star

The voters should seize their opportunity to punish Blair for his breach of international law
by Scott Ritter
Published on Sunday, April 3, 2005 by the Independent (UK)

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell has secured his place in history, not as a great American military leader, national security advisor, or diplomatic representative of his country, but rather the dupe who peddled false intelligence data to the Security Council of the United Nations on that fateful day on 5 February 2003, sealing the US case for war with Iraq. Powell, once revered as an American hero, will be remembered as Bush's shill for a sham case for war, waxing eloquently: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" for ever fixed in the minds of the more than 150 million people who watched him that day...

© 2005 The Independent

Pro-Death Politics
by William Greider
Published on Sunday, April 3, 2005 by The Nation

I was astounded to read an E.J. Dionne column in the Washington Post about a baby boy in Texas who was denied life support by hospital officials over the objections of his mother--astounded because this act of euthanasia was authorized by a state law passed by then-Governor George W. Bush. Or should we call it "murder," as some Republicans fervently insist in the death of Terri Schiavo? I wanted to know more Bush's role, but the Post never returned to the matter. I wanted to know more about the circumstances surrounding the death of Representative Tom DeLay's injured father (the doctors pulled the plug on him with the family's consent).
I also want to know who makes these godlike choices for the Hospital Corporation of America, the 191-hospital chain built by Senator-Doctor Bill Frist's family. Does HCA follow the end-of-life logic suggested by Bush's law, or do the hospitals subscribe to Pope John Paul II's dictum that providing food and water to sustain brain-dead mortals is "morally obligatory"?...
These questions sound tasteless and insensitive, I know, but our sensibilities have been jarred by the recent melodrama mounted by the right. The Pope's death was, by contrast, a model for dying with dignity and proper mourning. The life-or-death issue goes deeper than the obvious hypocrisy of certain politicians. It leads us into intriguing, disturbing questions about what "moral people" believe in this very moralistic country. Shouldn't we have a fuller discussion about who is pro-life, who is pro-death?
The Catholic Church, for instance, is opposed to the death penalty, though the US bishops have downplayed this conviction until very recently, compared with their political efforts against abortion rights, contraception and other "life-threatening" practices. Their conservative political allies, the evangelical Protestants, find biblical authority for the state's right to kill certain citizens, yet the Catholic Church finds the opposite. How do these political partners reconcile their moral differences? I don't wish to provoke religious antagonism, but these questions ought to be asked because the American Catholic bishops and the Protestant Christian right have become a muscular political force for their shared version of "moral values," asserting their influence at the highest levels.
The Bible says simply, Thou Shalt Not Kill, but various codicils have been added over the millennia by religious thinkers. It's OK to kill people in war--lots of people--if the circumstances meet the theological test for a "just war." Pope John Paul II opposed the US invasion of Iraq, called it a "crime against peace" and a conflict that "threatens the fate of humanity." American bishops warned that Bush's war did not meet "the strict conditions in Catholic teaching." We should return to examine their position more closely, because the killing continues in Iraq, including death by torture. If you think about it, Washington's overwhelming power in the world is founded on death, the awesome arsenal for killing people...

The country [USA] has just witnessed an interlude of religious hysteria, encouraged and exploited by political quackery. The political cynicism of Republicans shocked the nation. But even more alarming is the enthusiasm of self-described "pro-life" forces for using the power of the state to impose their obtuse moral distinctions on the rest of us. The Catholic Church and many Protestant evangelicals are acting as partisan political players in a very dangerous manner. Once they have mobilized zealots to their moral causes, they can expect others to fight back in the same blind, intolerant manner...

© 2005 The Nation